


Torching Bridges As She Goes

by fictorium



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-09
Updated: 2010-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictorium/pseuds/fictorium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can't let those second chances keep passing you by; Shelby hits the road, but she's running <em>to</em> instead of from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torching Bridges As She Goes

In my life, I never saw me writing Glee.  But cast Idina Menzel in your show and ~things happen~, it would seem.

**Title:** Torching Bridges As She Goes  
**Author:** lauriestein  
**Rating**: G  
**Characters:** Shelby, mentions of Rachel and Beth  
**Spoilers: **Up to 'Regionals'  
**Summary:** Can't let those second chances keep passing you by; Shelby hits the road, but she's running _to_ instead of from.  
**Disclaimer:** This all belongs to Ryan Murphy and FOX etc, I own nothing and am making no profit, promise.  And there's a line lifted straight from Sorkin and twisted for my purposes.  You'll see it a mile off ;)

[In its original home at the While The Cat's Away Ficathon.](http://community.livejournal.com/writetherest/13494.html?thread=108982#t108982)

Moving back to New York is a ridiculous idea, but Shelby packs two suitcases and all the baby stuff she can afford and loads the trunk of the car without a second thought.

She can't stay here, where everybody knows about her second chance and the comparisons will fly thick and fast. She can't stay and see the pain on Rachel's face, reliving her rejection over and over again. This has to be about Beth, about being a good mother in the ways that Shelby's own never was.

People will say she failed with Rachel, but they don't understand the simple, glaring truth of it all: giving up Rachel was an extraordinary act of motherhood. She gave her a chance at a family, at stability, and cool glasses of water when she cries. Looking at Beth, asleep in her car seat with such a peaceful little face, Shelby knows she'd do the same again, if she had to.

But she doesn't have to.

Not now, when she's a grown woman with poor, dead Aunt Sally's inheritance burning a hole in her bank account. It won't last long, not in Manhattan where everything's expensive, but it's enough for a first step and an escape route. She'll teach singing to the fresh-off-the-bus wannabes, and public schools in New York need teachers, too. She'll make it work, because she has to.

Beth will have everything that Shelby could want for her, from the culture and the vibrancy to the feeling that anything's possible. And in a year or two, when Rachel comes to New York for college (because everyone knows she's not going anywhere else) maybe they can actually try to heal these sixteen, or eighteen by then, years of knowing each other in the abstract.

There's a long drive ahead, but Shelby knows already the places where she'll stop and the long stretches of road that will provide them with freedom. She accelerates onto the expressway with a smile, because this is leaving in triumph, of sorts, not returning with her tail between her legs.

Later, when she finally approaches the twinkling lights along the Hudson River, the diaper changes and soft-rock fuzzy radio stations and stiff legs are all worth it.

It's good to be home.

_   
**Fic: Torching Bridges As She Goes, Glee, Shelby, G**   
_


End file.
